I live in Canada. My girlfriend is Chinese (also living in Canada), and while we are able to communicate via SMS, her mobile carrier isn’t the best, and so there have often been issues for us with regular texting. She expressed a strong preference to use WeChat, at least as a backup option for when texting fails us. While I have some pretty significant reservations, it’s not the hill I want to die on. So my question is: what can be done to use WeChat without compromising my whole phone? I’m okay with it if our conversations aren’t private, but I’d like to know that I’m not giving unfettered access to all of my phone’s systems and data to the CCP. What can be done to limit the reach of this ubiquitous app on my device?
Why don’t you use a better messaging app? If not matrix, then signal? Even telegram is better compared to both wechat and sms.
She’s not very tech savvy at all. It would be asking a lot. I’d rather stick to something she is comfortable with.
One does not need to be tech savvy for that. All 3 are not like a terminal controlled operating system, but a normal messaging app. But if you are ok with giving up privacy, I shouldn’t tell you what to do instead.